Bookly

A library on your cellphone.

The Problem

Kids just don’t read anymore. It’s all cellphones, Beliebering, Whatsapp and the most popular thing in South Africa – Mxit. So when you want to launch a new book to the tween market, how do you do it successfully?

The Solution

For Fiona Snyckers’ new novel “Team Trinity”, we built an e-book reader for Mxit, allowing us to launch the book digitally to an audience of 10 million people using Mxit on their mobiles.

The Idea

We built the most sophisticated e-book reader ever developed for Mxit. Bringing smartphone functionality to feature phones… we put the book right into the palm of their hands. bookly on Mxit became a place where kids could read again.

We built in all the features of more advanced, electronic readers – users can browse books by name, author or genre, save their progress, create their own virtual bookshelf and even get rewarded with badges for reading the most.

We now have over 400 books on the platform, giving kids direct access to quality literature and in the process, improving their education and getting them to read again.

The Results

bookly will continue to add even more educational material and textbooks… turning even the most basic cellphone into a powerful educational tool. In a country plagued by illiteracy - where access to reading is reserved for the elite few, bookly has given millions of children their very own library… on their very own phone.

In the first two weeks:

bookly has received over 8,6 million page views

There have been more than 500 000 unique visitors

Over 150 000 books have been started

With news of bookly spreading fast, it has already generated over R964 000 in Earned Media

bookly has been awarded the 'Most Innovative App' award at the prestigious MTN App of the Year Awards

How it works

Access bookly by adding bookly as a contact on Mxit, or through the book section on the new app store.